Greeks in the Czech Republic

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Greeks in the Czech Republic have a presence dating back to the 20th century. Roughly 12,000 Greek citizens, mainly from

Greek Macedonia in Northern Greece, who fled from the 1946–1949 Greek Civil War were settled in several formerly German inhabited areas in Czechoslovakia.[1]

Migration history

Monument "70 years since the arrival of the Greeks in the Jeseník Region 1949 – 2019" in Jeseník

The admission of Greek Communist refugees to Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1946-49

Eastern Anatolia.[5]

Beginning in 1975, shortly after the overthrow of the Colonels' dictatorship and a programme of political liberalisation in Greece which led to the legalisation of the KKE, several thousand young Greeks, including those born in Czechoslovakia, emigrated to Greece.[6] Older Greeks followed them some years later, after an arrangement was made between the Greek and Czechoslovak governments for them to receive their pensions in Greece.[7] By 1991, there were just 3,443 people in Czechoslovakia who declared Greek ethnicity; almost all of those were in the Czech portion of the country, with just 65 in the Slovak portion.[8] However, many of those who did emigrate to (mainly northern) Greece continued to retain strong links with the Czech Republic, with a few even using their dual Greek-Czech national identities and contacts to help establish trade links between the two countries.

Language

In their early days in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, ethnic Greek Macedonian and Slav Macedonian migrants used

Eastern Anatolia dialect of Turkish
rather than the Standard (Demotic) Greek used by the majority of Greek speakers.

In situations where families from these communities had ancestors originating in

Urum
, there had been a long tradition of using Russian as a second language after Pontic Greek and Turkish anyway. But the use of Russian was further reinforced in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia by the compulsory teaching of the language in schools.

Although a poor command of Modern Greek was previously often evident among the grandchildren of Greek refugees born in the 1980s and later,[10] those from families who returned to Greece from the mid-70s have now been fully re-assimilated into Greek society and the Modern Greek education system. In fact, their multi-lingual background has enabled ethnic Greeks from Czechoslovakia (and elsewhere in the former Soviet Bloc) to develop and exploit a marked facility in foreign language learning and communication.

Next Generation Migration - 2008 Greek economic crisis

The next migration was caused by the Greek government-debt crisis in 2008. From 2008 at least 200,000 Greeks emigrated abroad. The main reason for Greeks choosing to move to the Czech Republic was job vacancies at foreign companies - mostly IT companies.

Notable people

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 6
  2. ^ Králová 2009, p. 337
  3. ^ Zissaki-Healy 2004, p. 27
  4. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 8
  5. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 10
  6. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 15
  7. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 16
  8. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 17
  9. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 26
  10. ^ Sloboda 2003, p. 20

References

  • Sloboda, Marián (2003), "Language maintenance and shifts in a Greek community in a heterolinguistic environment: the Greeks in the Czech Republic" (PDF), Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 29 (1): 5–33,
    ISSN 0364-2976
  • Zissaki-Healy, Tassula (2004), "The World We Live In: Children of the storm", The New Presence (3): 27–28,
    ISSN 1211-8303
  • Králová, Kateřina (2009), "Otázka loajality řecké emigrace v Československu v letech 1948 až 1968/Loyalty of the Greek Emigrants in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1968", Slavonic Review, 95 (3): 337–350,
    ISSN 0037-6922
  • Greek brain drain - theguardian.com

Further reading

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greeks_in_the_Czech_Republic&oldid=1192341925"